IS LA STILL TOP GUN?

It was just announced that Jerry Bruckheimer would return to Paramount Pictures, his original home studio,  to produce films for the next several years. It was also announced that he would resuscitate the 48 Hours and Top Gun franchises.

What got me excited, but seemed missing from the report, was the financial impact that announcement will have on Los Angeles. Or, maybe somewhere else.

Bruckheimer makes BIG films: Pirates of the Caribbean, Flashdance, The Bad Boys franchise, Days of Thunder to name only a few. BIG films mean BIG MONEY. It would not be surprising to learn after the films are produced and released they cost in excess of $200 million each. My sense is that number is probably small compared to what it will be when all production and marketing costs are tallied, but whatever they are, there was in that announcement the implied statement  that they are about to spend in excess of $400 to $500 million dollars on these franchises.

Do you have any idea how many people will be hired to work on those films? hundreds, if not thousands. And, there are the service companies , suppliers and facilities that will get work. They too hire lots of people and will need many more to fulfill the BIG film requirements. Then there are locations to be selected and special effects and CGI requirements. Add travel, food, transportation  and the list of needs just goes on and on and on. And all of them can be satisfied in Encino, Van Nuys, Santa Monica, San Bernardino, Culver City and dozens of other Los Angeles area cities and towns. There is an explosion of jobs on the horizon.

When I published The Hollywood Reporter I liked to refer to the entertainment business as a job creation factory. No other industry consistently creates jobs each and every time a film is released.  Look at the end credits of any big budget film,  the names are still rolling when the last of the popcorn is removed from the theater floors. Every name on that list was someone who got paid to do a job. Sadly they all have to go out and find another job but they know this is the town and the business where most of those jobs are created.

This announcement has to be huge news for Los Angeles. BUT. You don't think every other facility in the world can do the math? Locations around the world will travel here with every incentive they can muster to attract those film expenditures to their state or their country. Why not do CGI remotely from New Mexico, or go to England for sound stages, or edit off shore,  score the music with the Seattle Orchestra, or use overseas talent and get additional funds? Tax incentives will be guaranteed, financial support will be offered. For every dollar spent on these Bruckheimer films there will be dozens of competitors  willing to offer whatever it takes to move those dollars to their borders or shores.

The dollars are all currently unallocated but  all of them will eventually be spent, but only once. Every job filled will be one time only, every service acquired can't and won't be acquired again, once the money is allocated that's it. It is gone for good.  But every dollar, all hundreds of millions of them, will become available and will be spent, that is the bottom line of the announcement. The money is coming and will flow like a river but for only a short, somewhat predictable, period of time.

The question is will Los Angles be ready to go to the mat to guarantee every dollar spent is spent here in Los Angeles?  Will they step up and fight to keep the jobs here? Will they resist politics to do what is right for this region? Time will tell but if any of these dollars go anywhere else it won't be because the city was caught off guard.

THANK YOU IS COMMUNICATION FOR PEOPLE

Thank you acknowledges an act someone does for someone else with no
expectation in return.

When we open a door, give up a seat, let someone pass or do an
especially good job we are giving a gift. Not a birthday or holiday
gift, but a gift none the less.

We are acknowledging someone else is in the doorway, on the road, in
the office or on the bus. We are saying, for the moment, allow me to be
deferential to you, to your needs. It is a gift of kindness.

The reality is when we perform these gestures of recognition they are
done willingly and the benefits received are all in the doing.

The completion of the dialog is the expression: thank you.  That
expression says, I know what you did for me. I know in its own small
way it is a gift and, while I appreciate it, more importantly I
recognize in that one split moment in time you are a part of my life
and I welcome you into it.

Don't ever overlook a thank you. It is a human expression that no
other species enjoys.

Let's not lose it.

Disasters: you are alone

Disasters: you are alone:

The images that resulted from hurricane Haiyan, in the Philippines, are devastating. It is hard to believe one force of nature could have such an effect. Not that the images represent something more terrible than those of Katrina, or Sandy or, Puket or for that matter, any natural disaster.  As humans we live with nature and we understand the contract we have with it.  We know its power, we know its unpredictability and we know we can’t stop it. Although it thrills us most days with the sheerness of its beauty we also accept it can plow us under whenever it wants.

Many of us live with the anxiety, whether during specific times of the year or throughout the year that comes with earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis or typhoons, often that include residual floods, fires and always a total sense of chaos. We know the harshness of nature can, and will, hit us when we least expect it and we accept that no protocol differentiates where it occurs, who gets hit and who gets spared.  There are no entitled people, no political consideration and no priority. Nature is the quintessential democracy. Natural disasters are a part of our lives. We live with them, respect them and can do nothing about them.

But, and I mean BUT in a big way, there are things we have to know about all of them. Let’s call them the axioms of natural disasters.

First we must recognize we are alone. The moment they hit the first thing we do is protect ourselves. We can never be in the right place. There is no such place. We have to depend on instantaneous instincts to keep ourselves alive.  Since there are generally no warnings it is imperative we first secure our own survivability, then think about family and friends, but not until we are protected.

Second there will be no quick solution. For a period of time, 24 hours up to one or two weeks, we have to survive on our own or we will not survive at all.

Normally when we get hurt and go to the ER there we find doctors, nurses, medicines and help to care for our wounds. When tens of thousands of us have the same injuries, the same medical needs, at the same moment there will never be enough doctors, nurses or medications to cover us all.

Third, we will be faced with virtually no communication, no power and little or no means of coping. Phones won’t work, there be no email, texting or cell service. For a society that seems incapable, in good times, of surviving a few minutes disconnected from our mobile devices we will find ourselves in a serious, unnatural environment. 

History has proven that many with guns will take to the streets shooting, stealing, raping and assaulting whoever gets in their way. Looting is a given. No store will be safe. The facilities with food and water will go first, followed quickly by any enterprise that dispenses drugs, then virtually all stores will be looted of everything as though someone really needs, and can use, a television in the midst of an unthinkable powerless world. But the stores are there, unprotected and those who don’t care will avail themselves of whatever they want to take.  Think about stores that sell guns and ammunition. Who gets to these first?

There will be no first responders, no authority and virtually no rules nor law. Often roads will disappear, neighborhoods will lose their boundaries, power lines will be down and gas valves will be open only intensifying the threat of total personal annihilation.

Over time order will replace the chaos. Needed supplies will arrive with those nearest the supply lines first followed, at the end, by the outliers. The injured will be cared for, the dead buried. Finally the personal lives of everyone involved will be rebuilt with borrowed money, the good will of neighbors and the kindness of strangers around the world who simply want to help.

Very few, if any, of the law breakers will be prosecuted and very few lessons will actually be learned.  The survivor’s lives will begin to return to normal with memories of horror welded into their souls.

 This is not a fantasy. This at any moment can be reality. All of us are vulnerable to the    everyday threat of natural disasters.   We can provide for our own survival by accepting that it could happen to us and that we have a plan in the event that it does.  There are questions that have to be asked first.

Could we live for a week or two without phones, stores, and roofs over our heads? Could we stay warm, fed and mobile? Do we have the tools to free someone buried? Could we stop the bleeding, apply the tourniquet, lower the fever, and repair the fracture? Could we protect what we have from renegades who will operate without law, even though we ourselves don’t have guns? Is there a plan in place for how to connect with family and friends who live up the street, across town or on the other side of the country?

These are not random questions. We all know neighbors who could live as such for months based on their own skills but for most of the rest of us these are unfamiliar skills that might be essential only one time in our lives. What will we do if we need them and don’t have them?

The answer lies in getting ready now and praying we never need to use them. Don’t ever be fooled: We are alone. 

NFL LOCKER ROOMS:

In a piece written in the LA Times on November 12^th Neal Gabler speaks to how the NFL locker rooms are out of touch with the rest of the world. While I can’t say I completely disagree with Neal Gabler, although it would be a first, I do agree with the concept of manliness equals physicality. As young men we all thought that somehow our only option to harassment, when push came to shove, was through a show of force. As we got older we learned there are many ways beyond physical to face adversity.

I don’t feel anyone in any workplace situation should be confronted with physical nor emotional pain that is not tolerable. That level of tolerance has to be defined by the one receiving the harassment and that can, and will, vary from one person to another. Some of us are thinner skinned than others. Fine, but that is the way it is in the real world. But I also feel a locker is a different work place, a different environment. It is not an office. Offices do not huddle up before the day and rally to motivate each other to victory; offices do not think the way teams think.  Offices are not judged solely on the basis of 16 days of work. To equate a locker room with a normal work place is naïve, although many offices could probably learn a lot from team locker rooms about teamwork, goals, effort, cooperation, and sacrifice etc., characteristics that have all but been eliminated by lawyers from most office environments but thrive in NFL locker rooms.

Lockers are for teams and teams need to build a team characteristic. The strength of any team is developed when each member of the team willingly submits their ego to the team. There is no individual on the team. The team wins and loses together. When the team has a collective ego, separate from the individual members of the team, it is like having a 12th player on the field in football, a 6^th on the court in basketball etc. The extra team member is invisible, cannot be defended against and is the difference between winning and losing. The team is defined by this characteristic. All members of the team have to buy into this concept.

One only has to look at a winning team. There are no black players, nor white players, nor Hispanics, or Presbyterians. There are only teammates, all of which have a job to do and if done properly then they win. As a team.   I find the NFL a great model against the very concept of racism. Win and they all get more money, more rewards, more of everything and they each know they won’t win without the others on the team. Color and everything else be damned. Just do your job.

In the NFL today management has more interest in marketing the game than in the game. They want to sell NFL merchandise to women, women journalists now have to be in the locker rooms and on the sidelines interviewing coaches and players all so the NFL gets more women as viewers. Maybe a softer thought process to the game will attract more female viewers, maybe the game is too rough so they devise ways to hamper how players hit each other. While it is a fact that the average player today is bigger, stronger, faster and probably smarter than their counterparts of decades ago it is also a fact that the physical relativity of one player to another today is the same as it has always been, they are all bigger, faster and stronger. By hampering how a player hits another player by fines and penalties makes a player hesitate. Any one playing sports knows hesitation is a killer. It has to be all or nothing.

Head injuries have to be recognized and dealt with by professionals in the medical community. Unfortunately concussions will be part of the game yet no one should be subject to a concussion and then expected to go back into the game. There are probably better helmet technologies and there are other solutions no doubt on the horizon, but the answer does not lie in asking players to play unnaturally, which is not to say dirty.

If a locker room is a place where camaraderie is established and they need hazing to create it then have at it. No one should be injured or hampered from performing at their top level through in- locker room high jinks. Any player who violates those principles hurts their team and they should be shunned by their teammates for preventing the team for putting their best effort on the field.

People like to watch hard-hitting football. It is a physical and sometimes violent game. Those who play it know all the caveats and yet love what they are doing. Us, on the sidelines, who don’t play, but love to watch, should not suggest how they ought to play the game nor should we carry on the way we have for the last few weeks because something we don’t understand took place in a place we don’t understand yet we feel qualified to solve. We don’t and we shouldn’t.

NEWS EXCLUSIVES

NEWS EXCLUSIVES:

I remember when I was publishing the Hollywood Reporter the editor kept a count of our “exclusives”. This, she said was a meaningful measure of how well we were doing our job. I completely agreed but only on the basis that the exclusives were meaningful, not simply a lower level story that had meaning only to a few of our readers.

When I took a count of what our actual exclusives were and excluded those we counted but were far less meaningful we were about at parity with the other media serving our market. No media thinks it will get all the meaningful news first and works very hard to get as many as possible but the truth is the more meaningful the news the more widely covered it will be and getting something exclusive will be very difficult.

Keep in mind the only one who knows something is exclusive is the one reading the media that is making the claim, so the reason for the bragging must be about holding on to the reader or viewer one has.  Problem is if the “exclusive” is wrong, like the CNN debacle of this past week then the media only reinforces how poor a job they are doing and will force viewers, readers to look elsewhere for the “real” news.

I don’t know why this concept of exclusive is so pervasive in media today but it is almost epidemic. Every media wants to be first or exclusive and will report almost anything that they can just to be able to say it was exclusive.

Getting a news story first was always the goal but there was always the unspoken rule that the news be verifiably correct. Speed of reporting the facts was the object. That is no longer the case forcing readers and viewers to become more jaded in their assessment of media in general and news media in particular.

WASATCH

                                                   

Today our family lost a dog. In reality the dog belonged to P.J., my grandson.  He was the one who looked after him. 

The dog’s name was Wasatch. Wasatch is the name of a beautiful mountain range in Utah and the name was given to the dog by PJ’s mom, Gia, a native of Salt Lake City, who spent many happy hours on the mountains. I remember she told her family either you come up with a name or I will and she did.

Losing a dog is tragic. Losing this dog is even worse. There is no other way to describe it.  It is impossible to grasp how hard it is to live with a dog for only 10 to 15 years and know that is about the length of time we can expect to live with them. To live with a dog for only 5 years as Wasatch’s family did is beyond words.

Wasatch was a typical dog in every sense of the word. He characterized the very essence of what a great dog does. He was funny, he was loyal, he was smart and he looked out for every member of his human family. No one got into their home without Wasatch letting them know someone was on the property.

At night he would go up to PJ’s room and while PJ was sleeping he would climb up on the bed and sleep alongside his buddy, PJ.  In the morning Gia would find the two of them fast asleep side by side.

He was given the reign of the kitchen area with an electronic fence. With his collar and the current on he was to stay in his prescribed area. He only needed to feel the gentle shock once and that was that. He would not venture out of his area with or without his collar.

He loved to run. PJ’s back yard is a good size and can be traversed in a large circle. Wasatch would run across the yard, down behind the side of garage, around the back, cross the basketball area, down the thicket of tall grass on the side of the house and then back around he would go, again and again and again.  If you wanted to laugh just watch that dog do laps around the house. It was better than paid entertainment. 

When P.J.’s family went to Utah for their annual summer holiday they filled their van with mom and dad, sisters Lena and Devan, suitcases for everyone, bicycles for everyone and way in the back sat P.J. with Wasatch. I never could figure how they got all that stuff into one mini van but the topper was how P.J. and a 60-pound Wasatch could sit together for a 20-hour ride. Only one who loved a dog and only a dog who loved a boy could do that.  

Wasatch was not allowed on the furniture so while you sat where he wanted to sit he would sit on the floor right in front of you and put his paw on your leg until you paid attention to him. It took about one second for him to get all the attention he wanted.

I remember when I visited the family Wasatch would recognize my scent and voice and come running to greet me. For the first several years of his life that meant there would be a small amount of pee deposited on the floor. He got excited to see me and I must admit I felt the same. While no one knew it I almost peed myself when I was greeting him. He just made everyone so darn happy.

He sat under the kitchen table when the family was having their meals. He was a member of the family and a meal was not the same if he was not under there waiting for something worth eating to drop.

Not a day went by that Wasatch did not make you smile, laugh or feel good. You see it is said that a dog is a man’s best friend. Well to me a dog defines the word friend.  Friends are often described by what they do for each other. Dogs do not ask for anything, they only give. They never judge, they never question and they never compete. They are there just for you. There is no ego in a dog. Forget to feed them on time, no problem, they are thrilled when it comes and harbor no ill will for it being late. Bring any emotion or mood to a dog; sadness, frustration, anger, anxiety and they will sense it, respond to it and just be there with you, asking for nothing and wanting nothing. 

When you are ready to toss the ball so are they. You want to go for a ride in the car? Let’s go, want lunch, hmmm, that’s a good idea. Go for a run? Me too. Tired? Let’s take a nap. It makes no difference what you want to do; a dog will want to do it too.

Wasatch was a companion, a friend and a part of our lives. We miss him and will always remember him. When asked if the pain is so great losing a dog, why get one? The answer is in the dog. The joy of having one will always over come the tragedy of losing one. Living is accepting risk, defeat and failure. It is the willingness to trust, to love, to give, to sacrifice all without asking for anything in return. When a person is willing to accept whatever happens both good and bad they are alive.  Having a dog in your life is a gift. If we are not willing to accept all that comes with the gift then we are not worthy of having it.

Wasatch was such a gift. All of us are so lucky we had him in our lives. We all accepted his love and our love for him unconditionally. He had to leave us and we have to accept that as a part of the gift he gave us. 

But he has earned a place in our hearts and will forever reside there as a constant reminder of how lucky we are to have lived with him.

WHY WE DON'T LEAD ANYMORE:
Last night I watched 60 Minutes, as I always do on Sunday nights, and was struck by a segment on an Italian company, Luxottica. It is the largest producer and distributor of eye ware, (glasses) in the world.  I kept thinking throughout the broadcast why is the largest producer of anything not in the United States?  In fact on another segment on the same show they discussed a Chinese company, Huawei that is now the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world followed by two others from Sweden, Eriksson and France, Al Ca Tel.  It was a disturbing shock that we have been the inventors and the leaders in these industries and are now down-the- line competitors to companies in other countries.  Why I asked?

My answer, while not over run with specifics to back up my thesis, is that the principal product of the United States today is MONEY. Sure we still have the inspired garage inventors creating things and the money people are still giving them money to scale up their products, but the long range strategy of these companies is to sell the company before profits are even on the horizon, or if there is sufficient revenue, go public.  In both cases the inventors and early investors get their money out and become part of the new rich, with bigger cars, planes, vacation homes and other toys for leisure that are the by product spoils for the inventors and investors.

But what happens to the companies and the products they made after the “get rich quick” sale takes place? Many of the companies go out of business, get absorbed into other product lines or simply vacillate between what was a good idea and is now an also ran product.

In colleges throughout the country we are educating our young in the art of business, basically the art of making money. They are not being taught the art of making something, creating something or even the art of selling something.

There is money to be made investing in other money opportunities, or money being made as a commission on monies transferred to other instruments, or monies made in tax schemes, or real estate transactions or swaps of some sort. The language of the moneyed workers has been reduced to jargon understood by only those few who have the degrees in how to make money moving money. Making money this way is not easy by any stretch of the imagination but it takes different skills and seems to be a far easier path to making huge money than making something that has to compete in a market of talented competitors.

Back to the Italian company, I got the impression the CEO wanted to make money, lots of it, but there did not seem to be a single thought of selling his company in order to buy that vacation home. Maybe as a CEO he already has one but it will be as a by-product of his commitment to making and selling a better product.  His company only got bigger by buying other companies and making them better for the markets they served. In fact in one instance they bought a company, Ray Ban, shut it down for a year until they re tooled, redesigned and improved the products. Can you imagine an American company doing such a thing? The CEO would be terminated on the spot, given his gazillions in parachute pay and been replaced that very day

We used to think like that in this country. But now we let others make the products, manage the people while we focus on making insane amounts of money for a few people, while the people who contributed to the success of the early launch or the ones who also ran a risk by getting involved in the first place are left with new managers, downsizing, off shoring and re-organization. Is it any wonder why employee morale is so low these days?

The young people give the impression they want to get involved in a start up, sell it to someone else and then use the money to get into hedge funds, investment banking or other money driven enterprises.  More and more I meet young people who work in some form of investments, insurance, banking or other non-manufacturing industries.

With the advent of technology, the axiomatic speed in which it operates and the overwhelming quickness products are obsolete, though more innovation, do you think the rest of the world will wait for us to imagine, create or make it and then they will copy it? I strongly doubt that. If we follow our current course of business and politics we will only be good for serving burgers, pizza and soda by the tub. The rest of the world will be enjoying our landscapes, waterways, mountains and our heritage, as wealthy visitors. But lucky for us they will still have to eat, rent cars, take taxis, have their rooms cleaned and their trash removed. The vast majority of Americans will be able to offer those services.

If we don’t get started now the future for us is over.